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Narrative modes
The novels of Ellroy’s First L.A. Quartet (1987 - 1992), Underworld USA Trilogy (1995 - 2009) and Second L.A. Quartet (2014 - ) employ four narrative modes. # Limited third-person narrator # First person narrator # Document insert # Reminiscenza 1. Limited third-person narrator This is the main narrative mode of the novels The Big Nowhere (1988), L.A. Confidential (1990), American Tabloid (1995) and all of Ellroy's subsequent novels. This mode uses a limited perspective, distinguishing it from the omniscient third-person narrator that is used more commonly in English novels. The narrator can describe only phenomena perceivable to a single character per chapter: this may include what the character sees and hears, etc., their interior thoughts, dreams and visions, and even the moment of the character’s death. One exception to this occurs at the beginning of Blood’s a Rover, which begins with a lengthy chapter that does not follow to the perspective of any character. What further distinguishes Ellroy’s use of this mode is that it never represents a single character over the course of a whole novel; rather, the novels generally use three protagonists, and the chapters alternate between perspectives. In the last chapters of The Big Nowhere, after two of the three protagonists have died, the perspective remains with the sole remaining protagonist. Similarly, in L.A. Confidential, the final chapters of the novel remain with the perspective of one protagonist, even though one other protagonist remains alive. From American Tabloid onwards, Ellroy signals the use of this device by placing the full name of the protagonist at the top of the first chapter in the novel told from their perspective. In The Cold Six Thousand (2001), Blood’s a Rover (2009) and This Storm (2019), some protagonists are protagonists of a preceding novel, thereby continuing the narrative perspective across novels. ' 2.' First person narrator This is the main narrative mode of The Black Dahlia (1987) and White Jazz (1992). In these two novels, the first-person narration uses the past tense to describe the action, and it is limited to the perspective of the narrator, who is also the protagonist of the story. In both of these cases, no direct mention is made of the protagonist writing the narrative at a future point after the main action has ceased. Since White Jazz, Ellroy has largely abandoned this narrative mode. However, from Blood’s a Rover onwards, Ellroy introduces a variation on the mode, whereby journal entries, written by characters within the story, appear throughout the novel. These journal sections are usually similar in length to chapters, are often written in a consistent style, regardless of the character writing them, and they frequently advance the action of the story. It is often the case that the time the character spends writing these journal entries is not accounted for in the story; however, in Blood’s a Rover, the existence of a character’s journal becomes a significant plot point. In This Storm, one of the novel’s protagonists is described as keeping a journal, and while this journal is also a significant plot point, its contents are never directly represented in the narrative. ' 3.' Document inserts This narrative mode is introduced in The Black Dahlia; however, it is used sparingly until L.A. Confidential, where lengthy, non-chapter sections of the novel are given over to it. This mode remains widely-used up to Blood’s a Rover. From Perfidia onwards, it is used much less frequently. This narrative mode is polyphonic, as it does not follow a single stylistic premise. Rather, it consists of an array of “real” documents, including transcripts of phone conversations, conversations recorded from covert listening devices, confidential communiques, journal entries (see above), pieces of professional and amateur journalism, and a range of other materials. Document inserts do not occur within chapters, and often occur in groups. From american Tabloid onwards, each document is preceded by the legend “Document insert:”, which is then followed with a description of the document, including time and date. They are often used to bridge long chronological jumps in the story. They can also be used to advance the story by presenting information that is not known to the novel’s protagonists. As with the journal entries above, mention is rarely made of the provenance of these documents in the narrative text, although it is implied at the end of Blood’s a Rover that one of the protagonists of that novel has amassed and arranged these documents long after the action described in the novel has ceased. ' 4.' Reminiscenza This narrative mode is the least used, appearing in prologue and epilogue sections of White Jazz, Blood’s a Rover, Perfidia and This Storm. Although it is never made explicit, these sections are presented in the first-person perspective of one of the novel’s protagonists, implicitly from a time long after the main action of the novel has ceased. Unlike the preceding modes, this mode usually appears in italic script. The style is often more poetic than other modes, using shorter paragraphs and a more fluid grammar. These sections tend to focus on memory and the past, and act as a thematic framing of the novel’s action. The term “reminiscenza” is taken from the Perfidia and This Storm, both of which use the term within the prologue and epilogue sections. The term is Italian for “reminiscence” and is used in the title of Nikolai Medtner’s Op 38 Sonata Reminiscenza, which is both discussed and played by one of the novel’s protagonists.